As Transportation Division president of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART), Jeremy R. Ferguson represents 28,000 workers in the nine rail unions whose members work for the railroad freight hauling companies.
In early December President Joe Biden pushed forward a bill in Congress preventing railroad workers from striking against the rail companies with which they had been negotiating for months. A strike, coming right before Christmas, “would have devastated our economy,” Biden said. Biden and Congress drew heavy criticism for not including paid sick leave for railroad workers in the bill, a key demand of some of the unions. But Biden declared that the fight for sick leave “was not over.”
